College students learned to solve chemistry stoichiometry problems with a web-based intelligent tutor that provided hints and feedback, using either polite or direct language. There was a pattern in which students with low prior knowledge of chemistry performed better on subsequent problem-solving tests if they learned from the polite tutor rather than the direct tutor (d=.78 on an immediate te...

In Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel [31], Dr Jekyll is a well-regarded member of polite society, while his alter ego Mr Hyde shares the same physical form but roams abroad communing with the lowest elements. In this paper we present Grail, a well-behaved first-order functional language that is the target for an ML-like compiler; while also being a wholly imperative language of assignments that tr...

This paper investigates phonetic and prosodic features of polite versus informal speech. Two different communicative tasks were performed by speakers of two unrelated and culturally distant languages, Korean and German. We found that the polite speech of Korean speakers can be characterized by an increase of filled pauses and extralinguistic markers, a higher degree of breathiness, as well as l...

The classic method of Nelson and Oppen for combining decision procedures requires the theories to be stably-infinite. Unfortunately, some important theories do not fall into this category (e.g. the theory of bit-vectors). To remedy this problem, previous work introduced the notion of polite theories. Polite theories can be combined with any other theory using an extension of the Nelson-Oppen ap...

Euphemism is a communicative strategy used to frame a polite or less offensive language and to save people’s public face in communication. This study investigated the euphemistic strategies used by Persian speakers in situations associated with death and lying. Warren’s model of euphemism was drawn on as the analytic model guiding the study. To conduct the study, 60 male and female university s...

The paper argues that impoliteness may work differently in intercultural interactions than in L1 communication. Most researchers (cf. Bousfield, 2008; Culpeper, 2009, 2010; Haugh, 2011) analyzing impoliteness within one language seem to agree that no act is inherently impolite, and that such a condition depends on the context or speech situation that affects interpretation. This may not be quit...

In two experiments, children's use and understanding of polite forms and the relationship these abilities share with an ability to adopt the perspective of another were examined. Development in the understanding of polite forms seemed best characterized as sensitivity to the function of these forms in an increasing number of sentence types. Development in the use of polite forms could be viewed...